Monday, July 13, 2015

Fitting an Oil Pressure Gauge

<This post is part of the 'New Engine Rebuild' project>
Now that the engine is all sealed up (or so I thought, read on and see my monumental stupidity!!), it's time to drop some oil in and see if I can get some pressure!! To see how much pressure, I bought myself a second hand oil pressure gauge for about a fiver and the necessary gubbins to plumb it in.

It's been a long trek to get to this post so, let's get started...

The first thing to do was to fill a new oil filter with oil and screw it on to it's housing.

Once that was in place, I attached an old rocker cover and started to fill the engine with nice new oil. All was going well and I was excited, my spirits were high as I had finally reached this milestome and I was enjoying the whole experience. There's always something to spoil the moment though and this was when I noticed that the oil was leaking back out again as I had forgotten to push the pot joints into place!! Oh yes, I am that stupid!!

Rather than stop and take a photo, I ran off in a panic to another spare engine I have in the shed and removed the pot joints as quickly as I could, (which seems like a long time when you're flapping) and ran back in the house and pushed them in place as quickly as I could.

Seems it wasn't quickly enough as quite a large amount of oil had escaped. Some of which I managed to capture on an old plastic airbed that the engine is sat on, but inevitably some, quite a lot actually escaped into the floor. Thankfully it's a new room with no floor covering down, but it did discolour the chipboard and you may spot the odd footprint here and there!!

After moving the engine to clean up there was a 'small' stain.

With that 'fun' dealt with, I continued to fill the engine and eventually got the level I wanted on the dipstick.

Oil Pressure Gauge
Now I wanted to get my oil gauge attached. I bought a kit to enable me to achieve this which came with a 'T' piece adapter and a hose with attachments.

The 'T' piece adapter is screwed in place of the oil pressure switch.

Now the 'T' part if the kit, which will house the hose that goes off to the pressure gauge can be screwed in place. Also the oil pressure switch itself can be re-attached in the end of the adapter.

As all the threads are tapered, they self seal when they are tightened up. To seal the hose though, a tiny fibre washer is needed on each end. As they are so small and easy to lose, I kept them safe and sound in a bag until I came to need them.

The hose simply screws onto the 'T' piece over the fibre washer and once nipped up with a spanner is sealed.

To prime the oil pump, I removed the large banjo bolt and poured oil down the hole giving the crank a few turns by hand as it went in. After replacing the bolt, I turned the crank over with the starter motor and after a few turns, oil slowly started to make it's way along the hose and eventually plopped out of the end.

At this point I attached the oil pressure gauge on the other end of the hose, not forgetting the fibre washer. Hopefully running the oil right up the hose will purge as much of the air as possible giving a more accurate reading on the gauge.

Now it's time to see if we can make some pressure, so placing the gauge where I could see, it, I cranked the starter once more. It took about 10 second for the pointer to move, slowly at first but then it shot up and leveled off, pulsing between about 60 to 64psi.

Once the motor stopped, the needle returned back down to zero fairly quickly. Leaving it a second or so, I cranked it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke. This time the pressure started to rise after about 5 seconds and leveled off again just as before.

Looking at the Haynes, I found that the working pressure was stated as 4.2bar. Running that through Mr Google, it comes out at 61psi. So that's a result! An unexpected result, but a good one.

Conclusions
So that's it... The oil is in. The pump is primed and the pressure is correct. Think it might be time to crack open a beer!